Are you really backing up your notebook computer?
Admit it. You’d rather loose your wallet than your notebook computer. At least your credit card company will replace your Visa.
But who’s going to replace your data. Of course if you have been backing up your computer, it is less of a problem. You ARE backing up aren’t you? If you’re working on a network computer and saving your data to the server, you can leave the backups to your IT department. However if it’s just you and your laptop against the world, you’ll need to take responsibility for backing up! Here are three simple recommendations for backups.
1. External Hard Drive. Attach a portable external hard drive to your computer via USB (or firewire for Macs.) Maxtor has a line of external drives called OneTouch that enable you to back up you computer with “one touch.” The OneTouch III is about 5 inches by 8 ½ inches and is protected in a hard rubberized chassis. The drives come in a 200, 300 and 500GB capacity. The 200GB drive retails for $189.00. Maxtor also has a OneTouch III mini edition, as you can guess, is much smaller and lighter if you need a portable backup solution. (However they hold less data, 60 or 100GB models.)
Backups can be done with the included Retrospec software and setup to run either automatically or manually using the “one touch” button on the drive. You can also use Windows backup or any other backup software that recognizes external hard drives. Or you can simply drag and drop the files you want backed up to the drive. External hard drives are also a great way to store your overflowing collection of photos or MP3s.
The advantage of this system is it’s cheap, simple, and large enough to backup your entire drive. The disadvantage is you still need to remember to plug the drive in. If you only use your laptop when you are on the road it may not be convenient or light enough to carry the drive around.
2. Off-site backup service. For those who don’t want to think about backup at all, there are now many off-site backup services A typical service will have you install a small software agent on your computer, choose what files to backup and then the agent will automatically backup those files at specified times as long as you are connected to the Internet. Most of the sophisticated backup programs will only backup changes to a file once the initial backup is created which means backup times will usually take a few minutes.
Iron Mountain has a service Connected DataProtector designed to backup an individual PC. Iron Mountain has secure, geographically redundant locations so even though you can’t physically touch your backup, rest assured it’s out there! To retrieve files, use the software provider, or you can access it via a website or even request a CD of your data.
The price for offsite backup starts at $79.95 per year for 250MB of storage and up to 30GB for $799.97 per year. You won’t be able to backup your entire hard drive for that price, so you would need to limit your backups to important data (documents, E-mail, etc.)
3. Synchronizing. If your notebook PC is part of a network, you can use Windows XP to synchronize your local “my documents” directory (or other folders) as well as your Outlook E-mail to the network. You will want to ask your system administrator before you set this up to assure that there is room on the network for your data and that your synchronized data is added to the network backup rotation. The advantage of this system is it relieves you the burden of backing up files. You will also have all your documents whether you are in the office or on the road. The disadvantage is synchronization can be time consuming. This also isn’t a complete hard disk backup.
If you would like more information on these solutions, please give us a call!
Michael Tanney
Product Manager
HLP Associates, Inc.
www.hlp.net
But who’s going to replace your data. Of course if you have been backing up your computer, it is less of a problem. You ARE backing up aren’t you? If you’re working on a network computer and saving your data to the server, you can leave the backups to your IT department. However if it’s just you and your laptop against the world, you’ll need to take responsibility for backing up! Here are three simple recommendations for backups.
1. External Hard Drive. Attach a portable external hard drive to your computer via USB (or firewire for Macs.) Maxtor has a line of external drives called OneTouch that enable you to back up you computer with “one touch.” The OneTouch III is about 5 inches by 8 ½ inches and is protected in a hard rubberized chassis. The drives come in a 200, 300 and 500GB capacity. The 200GB drive retails for $189.00. Maxtor also has a OneTouch III mini edition, as you can guess, is much smaller and lighter if you need a portable backup solution. (However they hold less data, 60 or 100GB models.)
Backups can be done with the included Retrospec software and setup to run either automatically or manually using the “one touch” button on the drive. You can also use Windows backup or any other backup software that recognizes external hard drives. Or you can simply drag and drop the files you want backed up to the drive. External hard drives are also a great way to store your overflowing collection of photos or MP3s.
The advantage of this system is it’s cheap, simple, and large enough to backup your entire drive. The disadvantage is you still need to remember to plug the drive in. If you only use your laptop when you are on the road it may not be convenient or light enough to carry the drive around.
2. Off-site backup service. For those who don’t want to think about backup at all, there are now many off-site backup services A typical service will have you install a small software agent on your computer, choose what files to backup and then the agent will automatically backup those files at specified times as long as you are connected to the Internet. Most of the sophisticated backup programs will only backup changes to a file once the initial backup is created which means backup times will usually take a few minutes.
Iron Mountain has a service Connected DataProtector designed to backup an individual PC. Iron Mountain has secure, geographically redundant locations so even though you can’t physically touch your backup, rest assured it’s out there! To retrieve files, use the software provider, or you can access it via a website or even request a CD of your data.
The price for offsite backup starts at $79.95 per year for 250MB of storage and up to 30GB for $799.97 per year. You won’t be able to backup your entire hard drive for that price, so you would need to limit your backups to important data (documents, E-mail, etc.)
3. Synchronizing. If your notebook PC is part of a network, you can use Windows XP to synchronize your local “my documents” directory (or other folders) as well as your Outlook E-mail to the network. You will want to ask your system administrator before you set this up to assure that there is room on the network for your data and that your synchronized data is added to the network backup rotation. The advantage of this system is it relieves you the burden of backing up files. You will also have all your documents whether you are in the office or on the road. The disadvantage is synchronization can be time consuming. This also isn’t a complete hard disk backup.
If you would like more information on these solutions, please give us a call!
Michael Tanney
Product Manager
HLP Associates, Inc.
www.hlp.net
posted by Derek Rowan at
12:27 PM
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